by Joanne Seiff (Author)

Meet the people, sample the flavor, and experience the kinship through 11 unique events and more than 25 inspiring projects.

Yarn enthusiasts from coast to coast are embracing fiber festivals with gusto, from New York's Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival to Oregon's Black Sheep Gathering. This large-format, full-color book is a stunning visual celebration of eleven fiber festivals throughout the U.S., showcasing the rich marketplace and sprawling agricultural exhibits that attract visitors in astounding numbers. Perfect as a coffee table book, it also includes instructions for creating 25 unique knitting, crocheting, spinning, and dyeing projects that reflect the rural couture of these popular gatherings. Fiber Gathering brings America's most celebrated festivals into readers' hearts and homes-and inspires them to create clothing, art, and meaning from these time-honored crafts.

Throughout history, we've gathered together in the market square. We're there to buy and sell, to get good deals on fibers, fabrics, fruits, vegetables, and bread, but we're also there to see friends, gossip, trade recipes, and admire new clothes. We've got an eye on each other's animals, and we're going to keep them from getting into any trouble. It's our chance to hold someone else's baby or to congratulate a new grandmother. It's a chance to connect, to touch, and to bond with others.

Front Jacket

For fiber lovers, a festival is more than a setting for buying and selling materials--it's a gathering place where artisans, designers, farmers, and friends come together to teach, learn, share, and celebrate this timeless art in a unique 21st-Century marketplace.

Join author Joanne Seiff as she details the rich heritage, sprawling agriculture, and unique flavor of eleven fiber events throughout the U.S. From the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival to Oregon's Black Sheep Gathering--and lots of others in between--you'll get a taste of what each festival has to offer through a rich mix of photography, essays, lore, and even a local recipe. Talented designers have contributed top-of-the-line patterns for you to knit, crochet, spin, felt, hook, and dye your own distinctive masterpieces using fibers that are ubiquitous to each festival. Whether you're working with a sophisticated mohair-silk blend or skirting a fleece on shearing day, the twenty-five projects in this book are representative of the best of America's fiber festivals.

Perfect for the armchair traveler and fiber enthusiast alike, Fiber Gathering lets you bring America's most celebrated festivals into your heart and home--and inspires you to create clothing, art, and meaning from these time-honored crafts.

Author Biography

Joanne Seiff is a freelance writer, knitwear designer, educator, and fiber artist. Her writing and designs have appeared in Interweave Knits, Vogue Knitting, Better Homes and Gardens' Knit It!, Spin-Off, Belle Armoire, and Wild Fibers magazines; in the KnitPicks Yarn Catalog; in the Lion Brand Book, Just Gifts and the KnitLit books; and online at Knitty.com and Handspinners.com. She has won awards and sold handspun yarn nationwide. In December 2005, her handspun and handknitted art was part of a juried exhibition at the Kiana Malekzadeh Gallery in New York City.